I have had several people ask about how I modified the bios. Included is a screenshot showing what you need to do. Open up a hex editor and open your bios.bin file and the slic2.1 bin file. Find the slic table in your current bios and copy the new slic2.1 table and paste it over the old table. The tables are the same size. If you change anything else in your bios file the dos loader for the bios will start to read the file and do nothing. If you mod correctly it will read, show a progress bar and upload correctly. You can now activate windows 7.

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funny occurance, i tried this earlier today, before bemily posted this (went and compared bemily's file and original file in a hex editor, to figure it out). anyways. funny thing, i tried to use freedos file for my laptop nc8430, and it failed to boot to the usb drive (just noticed i have floppy boot disabled, hp's tool probably emulates a floppy boot using usb) so i made a bootable usb drive via other method and put the rompaq files on the drive. the rompaq app kept refusing to flash the bios, claiming read errors (probably checking the checksums in the bios). so i went and downloaded the freedos pack for the nx9420, and used the rompaq files from there with my bios file, and it worked.

so for those who cant seem to get it to work, the rompaq.exe from the nx9420 freedos package works fine.

becuase it does not have some of the check of other rompaq.exe files, the freedos rompaq for nx9420 will allow you to burn any rom to a non-compatible hp laptop. i just used it to burn a modded bios for nw8440, and i bricked my laptop.

i had winhexed a slic 2.1 into my nw8440 bios, but the native rompaq objected. i used the freedos rompaq from nw9420 - and presto! i renderd my laptop unbootable.

did u just use the rompaq.exe from the nx9420 package? or every file? i just used the rompaq.exe from the nx9420 package, every other file was from the original package for my laptop.

easiest way to get it fixed, that im currently aware of, blame the laptop and send it back to hp for repair, if your still under warranty. i havent looked into bios recovery for the HP COMPAQ laptops... yet

i just used the rompaq from the nx9420.
it's not in warrantee any more - hp will charge a fortune probably. so i'm looking for an alternative.

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does the laptop boot at all? or is it completely dead. because if it boots, and it just you cant see anything, you can probably blindflash it (theres a restore option where it flashs a backup file, if you made one, which is just the bios file renamed to .bak)

im still perplexed as to how only changing the SLIC can brick the laptop, since your only replacing the SLIC data, everything else should be in the same place in the bios file.